


dog beds and sleepy heads

by sweetwatersong



Series: girls and wolves; both have sharp teeth [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Captain America: The First Avenger, Gen, Pack Dynamics, Post-Avengers (2012), Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-05 00:53:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12783369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetwatersong/pseuds/sweetwatersong
Summary: This is true of a pack: There is strength in numbers. There are bonds closer than blood.This is true of the Avengers: They are a pack. But they all had to begin somewhere.[Snippets of an unfinished werewolf!AU.]





	1. avengers, assemble

**Author's Note:**

> In discussing [of forests and winter](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2335688) with cybermathwitch, I began spinning up background ideas to fit into that particular AU. While never finished, what pieces I dreamed up will be collected in this work.
> 
> Tags will be added as necessary.

"Except for Rogers, we've all been lone wolves," Natasha comments. "Even Stark, repressing his wolf and all. Getting this to work isn't going to be easy."

"Not up for the challenge?" Fury inquires, eyebrow rising. She huffs a wolf laugh in her human form.

"Not sure we won't make more of a mess than whoever we're fighting."

"Who said you'd be fighting anyone?" When she returns the eyebrow lift he tips his head in concession. "Say what you want about the man. The fact remains that Rogers got five menm from three different countries - almost all of them human - to stick together and become as good a pack as the world has ever seen. What’s more, he got that pack to win a war. If what we're facing is as bad as it could be..." He trails off, contemplating a future she can't see. But that's the point, isn't it? The alpha looks after the health of the pack and the pack follows their lead, trusting they make the right decisions. So she waits until her alpha sighs and shakes his head. "The Initiative blowing up might be the lesser of the two evils."

Natasha studies him for a long moment, waiting to see if he will add anything else. When it becomes clear that he said all he meant to she nods and rises. "I'll do my best. And I'll make sure Barton does his, too."

"Whatever happened to, "I'm not my partner's keeper"?" Her alpha quotes, humor returning to his scarred face.

"Someone has to feed him," she tosses over her shoulder, and is rewarded with a soft chuckle that follows her out the door.

-

"And Barton and Romanoff?" Steve holds his ground in front of Fury's desk, working to keep his body language loose and relaxed. For all that they are both alphas they are both humans too. He has no reason to fight with the director of SHIELD, not after New York - except for this.

Fury regards him steadily. "What about them?"

"They're yours."

"Damn right they are, and I'll fight tooth and nail to defend them. But given the little soiree over New York it seems sensible to leave them stationed with Stark. I've given them explicit orders to assist the Avengers in any way they can, short of treason against SHIELD."

"Wolves from two different packs working together - not to mention the High Fae prince." Steve grins wryly. "You expect that to be end well?"

"It worked well enough to save the world once. I'd like to imagine it will again. Oh, Barton and Romanoff will let me know about any world-ending things you encounter, since it seems that you might run into that occasionally. Beyond that, it's up to their discretion." Nick's sole eyebrow rises. "They know this world. They have resources you can't match. They're two of my best fighters and tacticians, and I'm offering them to you. You worked with non-pack before. Why should this be any different?"

-

There are things that they have faced that pack can fight, pack can win. This barrier, this fae spell woven to isolate the Captain, it is one of them. But neither Clint nor Natasha has a connection to Steve strong enough to breach it, to break through and save him. Teammates, yes, friends as well, but they aren't pack.

They aren't enough.

"Tony." Natasha bites off the word, watching opalescent forms gather around the figure slowly hitting his knees inside the barrier.

"Four minutes out," he shoots back, a howl of anguish in his words, and she doesn't have to be his packmate to hear the cry of his wolf, subdued and subsumed but never severed. Too long. He would take too long to get here.

Natasha flicks eyes that gleam golden to meet Clint's own yellow gaze. Inside the barrier the fae forms circle Steve, their baying distant and diminished through the shimmering bubble.

They and their wolves, their allegiances to the SHIELD pack, are not enough.

 

The packbonds break in a single cohesive snap, an ethereal blow that leaves Nick doubled over his desk and all the breath knocked out of his body. He aches in that endless moment, stunned and staggered and searching for two bonds that aren't there, aren't there -

"Hill," he manages, trembling fingers activating his comm.

"Confirmed," his pack and SHIELD second responds, her own voice shaking. "Barton and Romanoff have left the loop."

 

Even knowing he is fighting an enchantment, even knowing the blood dripping from his hands was his own, Steve can't focus long enough to remember why he is fighting at all. Animal fear has wrapped itself around his thoughts, his limbs, and something is clawing its way up his chest that he has no name for. No release for. He is lost, alone, drifting in a sea of enemies and terror.

And then he isn't.

Two forms crash through the glowing barrier, a wave of opalescent light washing across the barricaded battlefield in their wake. When Steve can see past the afterglow, desperately trying to wipe away the haze in preparation for the next attack, the next blow, a stocky gray wolf digs his massive claws into the turf and slides to a stop by his side. Hackles raised, head lowered, the broad-chested shifter chooses the position that puts him between the fae hounds and Steve - between danger and pack.

Pack?

He can't chase that thought before comfort washes up through the slight pressure as Clint leans against Steve's side; comfort, and clarity.

A shadow darts through the massed forms of fae creatures, lithe and lethal and almost impossibly fast. They fall when she clashes against them, throats torn and necks broken, and amidst the snarls and screams of the enemies comes a silence that trails her like a cloak.

Buoyed by the sensation of the two new bonds, familiar and unexpected and trusted beyond instinct or care, Steve and his wolf let themselves drift.

They are safe with their packmates, after all.


	2. troublemaker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being part of a pack isn't about blood. If Loki had understood that, how differently things might have gone.

This is true of the pack: When one hurts, all hurt.

“I swear to God, if Thor starts talking one more time about how sorry he is that Loki’s gone and started fucking things up-” Tony runs a hand through hair that’s already spiked from similar gestures over the tense afternoon. He doesn’t finish the sentence, for which they’re glad; Tony included, it would seem, because in an apparent attempt to change the tack of the conversation he turns on a heel and narrows his eyes at Clint. The other werewolf is perched silently on the windowsill overlooking the bustling New York streets, head turned towards the cloudy skyline. Natasha knows, though, that wherever his sharp eyes are looking it isn’t at the myriad groups of people down below.

“Why aren’t you more angry about all this, Barton? You’re the one who’s always looking to get a little payback on the Fae bastard after what he did to you.”

Natasha goes still as Steve and Bruce stiffen, all three now watching the exchange more carefully. They’ve brought up the compulsion before, they’ve helped Clint deal with its aftereffects, but as a rule they don’t discuss it as pointedly as Stark is attempting to. The pulse of warning that pushes through the pack bonds washes over him to no avail.

To their surprise Clint doesn’t retreat into himself or snap at Tony for knocking into an old wound. Instead he sighs, head dropping, and the lines at the corners of his eyes crease when he closes them.

“Because some of us know what it’s like to watch a brother go bad, Stark.”

Natasha, knowing as she does the convoluted turns of the Barton brothers’ story, familiar as she is with the honest and aching truths Clint’s admitted during dusty car rides and in cluttered safehouses, is likely the only one who knows exactly what is playing through his mind. But it’s possible, she thinks as she watches Tony’s mouth pull to the sides, that the billionaire may know more than he lets on. He backpedals physically at the rejoinder, rocking onto on one foot and noticeably dropping the taut lines of irritation for softer shoulders, hands that fall out of his pockets to curl by his sides. All signs of acquiescence, of appeasement.

“Right. Okay. Sorry.”

Clint cracks his eyes open enough to catch the visible change and huffs. “It’s okay. It’s not pleasant, but what can you do.”

“The right thing,” Steve says when it’s clear that Tony is still running through possible replies in his head. “That’s what we can do.”

It’s such a classic Rogers response that Natasha’s lips quirk to one side. So do Clint’s, even as he rolls his shoulders and sits more upright against the window frame.

“So what’s your call, Cap?”

-

This is true of the pack: When you are part of it, you are never parted from it.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” Loki warns Natasha as she struggles against the oil-like tar sucking her limbs down. “It’s designed to mitigate your particular kind of magic. After what happened in New York I put some time into having this specially made. In fact, I’m surprised that you even managed to change this far.”

She snarls at him soundlessly, falling back on anger to override the distress pulsing through her misshapen body. She had begun the change from wolf to human even as the troll flung her off, towards this pit, and by all rights she should have thumbs and toes and the words to curse his foul nature with human lips and a human voice. Instead she is caught between forms. Fur runs down her back and over her collarbones; claws arch against her lengthening toes and fingers where they are hidden in the clinging muck. Panic is there, too, waiting in the wings, but Natasha has been trained too well to let it take over. Wolves and humans alike die when they thrash in quicksand and tar pits; she will not be one of them.

A monster in her bones, she isn’t truly either of them.

Her wolf snarls with her, their thoughts overlapping as if her mind has double vision. Other wolves might fight the strange feeling, would slip under panic even faster at the uncomfortable and alien sensation of thinking-as-two instead of being-as-two. But they have lived skin to skin and cheek to cheek in the years that she spent running from the Red Room, in the years that her wolf lay trapped under the framework of a broken pack, and this strange form is nothing that can scare them.

The appraising look in Loki’s green eyes, though, is another story.

“If you’re expecting your _pack_ ,” a word that drips with carefully applied disdain as he waves towards the horizon, “to save you, I’d save your breath. As I said, your kind of magic is impotent in this ring. Fitting, is it not?” His curved lips are thin with self-amusement. “A fairy ring of sorts.”

Werewolf magic curls and coils inside her skin, waiting to be used, and all her efforts are useless. Her pack cannot find her now.

Natasha stares at the Fae prince, at the outcast who would chill her blood and hold her hostage, and drops her malformed jaw. Lifting her head upwards she howls to the blue, blue sky, in a voice that sings of wolf and battle and need, crying out across the distance.

“Silence!” Loki cuts in half a beat later. His hand gesture throws the air above the tar into wavering rainbows, distorting the sound until it is reflected back at her and cannot escape. But the damage is done, the message is carried by the winds that wind past him and over the hills of the lands that her pack claims, and Natasha watches him with eyes swirled green and yellow. Now it's time to wait.

She's become very good at waiting.

-

This is true of the pack: When help is needed, help will come.

The sting of ozone still fills the air around Natasha when she rises to her feet, the bones in her shoulders cracking in the shift back into human shape. Once that scent might have signaled danger to her hindbrain, conjured fear or cautiousness as she looked for the source of the threat. Now it only feels right as stray sparks continue to settle on her skin and Thor finishes the sigil binding his brother to the churned ground.

Loki chokes on the spell and his fury. “How?” Even in his defeat he is unable to comprehend how he has lost. "How could you have heard her? She's not even an Underhill monster!"

Natasha may be a monster but she is also pack, and so she feels Thor's furious sorrow as he lowers his hammer onto Loki's chest. "You are a far greater monster than they, brother."

In truth the idea of a Fae being part of pack magic is not so strange, as Loki should know; after all, there are stranger things in the world these days, if blue-snared spells can capture the minds of men and creatures from ancient stories roam land and sea. So Natasha smiles with teeth that curve too far and too sharp over her lips. "There are more things in heaven and Underhill, Horatio."

Perhaps Shakespeare might have approved.


	3. balanced

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If this whole process has been a test, Steve wants to know what the answer is. [A scene from Captain America.]

In the nearly-empty barrack, with the reality of tomorrow stretching before him, Steve looks up at the doctor this all hinges on. "Can I ask you one question?"

Dr. Erskine sinks onto the cot opposite him, eyebrows raised wryly. "Just one?"

"Why me?"

The odler man takes a moment to consider the question and settle in, setting his bottle down. "Do you know that your eyes are blue? Not such a rare color, for humans, but strange, when all your papers from your birth say they are green. It is only when you grow a little older and become sick, so often, that they say your eyes are blue. Many would think nothing of it, but," and he holds up his finger, "you are not simply a human. You are a werewolf. And when a man is in alignment with his wolf, which always has its golden eyes, it can be seen in the man. In his - in your case - blue eyes.

"Your eyes," and he gently taps the shirt over Steve's heart, "tell anyone who looks closely that you and your wolf are together, in agreement. That is where so many of our stories come from: the power, the strength, the healing of your kind. In fact, it is only when man and wolf are united that any werewolf has those traits. Otherwise, pfft." He spreads the fingers of his hand as if something is blowing away. "Nothing. You are a man, your wolf is a wolf, and no more. But together, in unison," and his fingers close as if to hold onto something, "you both become more than the sum of your parts."

The doctor settles back and studies Steve. "It is rare for this to be the normal state, but I think it is this, your wolf and his healing, which have kept you alive for so long. Your wolf is very much like you, if I am not mistaken. Am I right?"

Steve takes a long breath, reaching out to his other half, to the hidden creature under his skin. To the part of him that can never come out, because the body that houses it isn't strong enough to survive that change.

"I... think you are."

Dr. Erskine smiles with a pride undimmed by his weariness.

"I am glad to hear it. If you were able, you would be an alpha, I think. Meant to protect those you love, those under your protection. Your wolf, he agrees, and so you are both made the better for it. Healing, you already have; strength, speed, these things your body will not permit. But it is these enhancements that my treatment locks in, makes permanent; it will give your body a chance to embrace these traits, to grasp them at last. To keep forever. But," and he inclines his head, a warning in his solemn expression, "only if you and your wolf want it, together. You must agree that it is what you seek, that you are both united; otherwise..." He trails off, lips pursing. 

Steve considers this, knows the other self that lies underneath his skin is contemplating it too; not the end result of the trial, that's been covered long before now. What they are putting into words, into thoughts, is the joint purpose they have borne since he was old enough to know right from wrong; to wrap his fingers in a fist and make himself a bigger target for the next blow than the kid defenseless on the ground.

He looks up, eyes blue and calm, and nods.

"Won't be a problem, Doc."

Erskine nods. "I know. This is, after all, why I chose you. Just remember, Steven: whatever happens, do not be a perfect soldier, but a good alpha." And he taps Steve's chest again, the ribs above his heart, and wolf and man alike understand.

Five months later Steve stands across from the only other person who has undergone the transformation, who remains touched by Erskine's serum. He faces the man who has almost taken Bucky from him and feels the pulse of other, the tendrils of connection. Wolf to wolf, alpha to alpha, the Red Skull's feared other half calling out from across a void - not in challenge, but in need of defense.

Steve's wolf had once been hidden away because he could not withstand the change. The Red Skull's has been banished because he will not stand for it.

"You locked him away." Steve has to work to swallow the rage, the bitter taste of revulsion that coats his mouth with this new understanding. "You chained him up and blinded him, deafened him, so he doesn't know anything else." There is something burning in his chest, something racing through his veins like fury and fire and nothing he has ever felt before he saw the bodies of the tortured werewolves on the HYDRA facility's floor. And it is the thought of a wolf lost in darkness, drifting but for the whims and demands of the man standing across from him, the thought of someone torturing and so cruelly abusing what should have been the other half of himself -

Bucky growls even as he has to lean on the rail beside him for support, a wolf sound ripped from the human throat still hoarse from screaming. Steve closes his eyes, pulling the anger back into himself and out of the pack bonds.

"Your wolf isn't the monster," he tells the Red Skull when he can see clearly again. "You are."


End file.
